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Wisdom is not the product of schoolingbut the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

- Albert Einstein

Communities of Interest (CoIs):Learning through the Interaction of Multiple Knowledge Systems

Gerhard FischerCenter for LifeLong Learning & Design (L3D)

Department of Computer Science and Institute of Cognitive ScienceUniversity of Colorado, Boulder

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d/

24th Annual Information Systems Research Seminar In Scandinavia (IRIS'24),August 2001, Ulvik, Norway

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Overview

• Basic Message / Question

• Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D)

• Communities of Practice (CoPs)

• Communities of Interest (CoIs)

• Examples from our Work:- domain-oriented design environments (DODEs)- Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC)- Participate-In-The-Action (PITA) Board- DynaSites

• Conclusions

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The Basic Message / Question

How can we exploit the symmetry of ignorancein communities of interest as a source for social creativity?

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Brief Introduction of the Major Concepts

• knowledge systems — relations and interfaces between the differentactors and aspects of knowledge

• CoPs — practitioners who work as a community in a certain domain

• CoIs — bring different CoPs together to solve a problemRemark: CoP !" CoI: these are not either/or choices, but points on acontinuum (relative to our definitions of “domains and practices”)

• symmetry of ignorance — in CoIs there is nobody among all the carriersof knowledge (individual person or group) who has a guarantee that her/hisknowledge is superior

• social creativity —new insights, new ideas, and new artifacts by bringingdifferent points of view together and creating a shared understanding amongall stakeholders

• boundary objects — perform a brokering role involving translation,coordination, and alignment between the perspectives of different CoPs

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Knowledge Systems

• knowledge systems include:- computational systems- individual minds- knowledge building communities- knowledge management repositories- relations and interfaces between the above aspects of knowledge

• human knowledge systems: internal, tacit, conceptual- uniform, homogenous " CoPs- multiple, heterogenous " CoIs

• computational knowledge systems: externalizations- uniform, homogenous " DODEs- multiple, heterogenous " EDC, Participate-In-The-Action (PITA) Board,

DynaSites

• Neil Postman: “One cannot do philosophy with smoke signals” (in“Amusing Ourselves to Death”) " knowledge systems can both enable andconstrain our thinking and our ability to express ourselves, and knowledge systems forspecific activities and objectives must provide appropriate support

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L3D’s Research Focus

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) """" Intelligence Augmentation (IA)- replacement " empowerment- emulate " complement (exploit unique properties of new media)

• instructionist learning """" constructionist learning- learning about " learning to be- when the answer is known " when the answer is not known (collaborative

knowledge construction)

• individual """" social- knowledge in the head " creating shared understanding, distributed cognition

* among humans: CoIs, CoPs, boundary objects* among humans and tools/media (“virtual stakeholders”)

- access " informed participation

• things that think """" things that make us smart- what computers can do " what people and computers can do together- computational " computational and physical

• “gift-wrapping” with new media """" tradition and transcendence- technology " co-evolution of media and new theories about

thinking / working / learning / collaborating

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Thinking, Learning and Working —The “Wrong” Image?“The Thinker” by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)

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Individual and / versus Social

“The strength of the wolf is in the pack,and the strength of the pack is in the wolf.”

Rudyard Kipling

• John-Steiner, V. (2000) “Creative Collaboration” (Oxford University Press)

“Rodin's sculpture "The Thinker" dominates our collective imagination as the purestform of human inquiry — the lone, stoic thinker.

But while the Western belief in individualism romanticizes this perception of the solitaryprocess, the reality is that scientific and artistic forms emerge from the joint thinking,passionate conversations, and shared struggles common in meaningfulrelationships!

Many of the collaborators complemented each other, meshing different backgroundsand forms into fresh styles, while others completely transformed their fields.

The mind — rather than driving on solitude — is clearly dependent upon the reflection,renewal, and trust inherent in sustained human relationships.”

• response from Ernesto Arias (a colleague of mine):“Human interaction is not only needed but central to social creativity, but I do believe

that we as individuals, to participate in such collaborative inquiry and creation, needthe individual reflective time depicted by Rodin's sculpture. Without such reflection itis difficult to think about contributions to social creativity.”

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Communities of Practice (CoPs)—

Homogenous Design Communities

• CoPs: practitioners who work as a community in a certain domain

• examples:- architects, urban planners, research groups, software developers, and

software users- Worm Community System (1,400 scientists, 120 labs); to allow distributed

scientists to work together on data

• learning:- masters and apprentices- legitimate peripheral participation (LPP)- develop a notion of belonging

• problems:- “Group-Think” " when people work together too closely in communities,

they sometimes suffer illusions of righteousness and invincibility- human behavior is determined by the community's norms, rules and

incentives which we have accepted when we decided to enter it

• DODEs: systems supporting CoPs (examples: kitchen design, computer network design)

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Community of Practiceone accepted, well-established center (of expertise) and

a clear path of learning towards this center

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A DODE for Kitchen Design: Construction

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A DODE for Kitchen Design: Argumentation

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A DODE for Computer Network Design

(1)

(2)(3)

(4)

(5)

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Communities of Interest (CoIs)—

Heterogeneous Design Communities“Innovations come from outside the city wall.”

• CoIs = bring different CoPs together to solve a problem

• membership in CoIs is defined by a shared interest in the framing andresolution of a design problem

• diverse cultures- people from academia and from industry- software designers and software users- students and researchers from around the world

• fundamental challenges:- establish a common ground- building a shared understanding of the task at hand- learning to communicate with and learn from others who have a different

perspective and a different vocabulary for describing their ideas

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CoIs: Bringing Together Multiple CoPs

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CoIs: Multiple Centers of Expertise and Shifting Objectives

several centers of expertise which emerge, change and drift andno single, clear path of learning

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Social Creativity and “Symmetry of Ignorance”—

Sources of Power for CoIs

• the Renaissance scholar does not exist anymore — the individualhuman mind is limited (there is insufficient time to become a Renaissancescholar today — learners are forced to make choices, focus attention, andspecialize)

• distinct domain of human knowledge exist (C. P. Snow) — of criticalimportance: mutual appreciation, efforts to understand each other, increasein socially shared cognition and practice

• a “group has no head” — externalizations are critically more important for

groups and organizations than for individuals

• create boundary objects (shared objects to “talk about” and to “think with”)by exploiting the “symmetry of ignorance” as an opportunity for mutuallearning

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CoIs: Social Creativity and Boundary Objects

Boundary ObjectSocial Creativity

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Boundary Objects

“If a lion could speak would we understand him?” — Wittgenstein

• boundary objects serve- to communicate and coordinate the perspectives of CoPs brought

together for some purpose leading to the formation of a CoI- the interaction between users and (computational) environments- see: Star, S. L. (1989): "The Structure of Ill-Structured Solutions: Boundary

Objects and Heterogeneous Distributed Problem Solving." In L. Gasser &M. N. Huhns (Eds.), Distributed Artificial Intelligence, CA, pp. 37-54

• perform a brokering role involving translation, coordination and alignmentbetween the perspectives of different CoPs

• examples:- boundary objects can bridge the gap between situation models and

system models- prototypes serve as boundary objects between developers and users in

participatory system design (see: Ostwald, J. (1996): KnowledgeConstruction in Software Development: The Evolving Artifact Approach,Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, University ofColorado at Boulder)

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The Gap between Situation and System Models

Implementation UnitsApplication Units

Situation Model System Model- Symbolics:(graphics: draw-cricle x-center y-center radius inner-radius)

- Fortran package: CALL BLCIR (xcntr,ycntr,radius) CALL SHADE (xcrds, ycrds, npts,angle, gaps,ngaps,0,0)

ringdoughnuttirewheelwasher

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Communication Problems Based on Missing Boundary Objects

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The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC)http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d/systems/EDC

• creating shared understanding through collaborative design- symmetry of ignorance, mutual competence, and breakdowns as sources of

opportunity

• integration of physical and computational environments- support and exploit face-to-face collaboration- hardware: touch-sensitive electronic whiteboards, crickets- software: AgentSheets, DynaSites- beyond the screen: immersive environments

• support for reflection-in-action

- action space: AgentSheets, Visual AgenTalk- reflection space: DynaSites, WWW

• open system — seeding, evolutionary growth, reseeding process model

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The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory (EDC)

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The Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory

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Boundary Objects and the EDC

• physical and computational languages to “think-with” and to “act-with” —a common language meaningful to all stakeholders

• simulations —dynamic feedback meaningful to all stakeholders

• reflection spaces —explicit information helping stakeholders rememberwhat they have learned and to consider other perspectives

• open, evolvable tools — capturing important information not anticipated atsystem design time by encouraging a culture of participation, that addressesthe open-ended nature of problems

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The Participate-In-The-Action (PITA) Boardbased on: DGT electronic chessboard, NL; http://www.dgtprojects.com/

• supporting alternative processes (in addition to the EDC) to create content

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Differences between DODEs and the EDC

UserCommunities

Problems andArtifacts

KnowledgeDevelopment

Interaction Support

CoPs different tasks inthe same domainand uniformrepresentations

refinement of oneknowledge system

indirect (throughsystems andartifacts)

DODEs

CoIs multiple domainsand differentrepresentationalschemes

synthesis and mutuallearning through theintegration of multipleknowledge system

face to face,mediation byphysical andcomputationalobjects

EDC

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http://Seed.cs.colorado.edu/dynasites.Documentation.fcgi$node=dynasites.doc.home

• dynamic, extensible and integrated web-based information spaces

• supports the collaborative creation and evolution of artifacts through whichcommunication can take place

• examples:- Dynagloss — a decentralized, dynamically evolved space of concepts- Living Book — an information space evolving as a side effect of interaction

between readers- DynaClass —a DynaSites document type developed for class discussions

and workshops

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The LivingBook Model

• LivingBook:

- aims to blur the traditional distinction between readers and authors

- engages a community of interest who will enrich the seed with new ideas andnew connections to related information

• seed: a starting point for conversations and debates of the ideas it contains

• evolutionary growth: use will result in a growth of the information space

• reseeding: periodically, the LivingBook will be reseeded to incorporate the new ideasand information constructed during the evolutionary growth phase

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CoPs and CoIs Models: Shaping our Organizations

• the Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Societyhttp://www.colorado.edu/ATLAS/- new innovative collaborations and learning opportunities between the arts,

humanities, science, and engineering- new media to support these collaborative efforts and express new ideas

• the Institute of Cognitive Sciencehttp://psych-www.colorado.edu/ics/- a department (the CoP dimension; example: UC San Diego)- remaining an institute bringing representatives of different departments

together (the CoI dimension; example: CU-Boulder)

• the Center for LifeLong Learning and Design (L3D)http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~l3d/- a CoP based on a shared history and the use of concepts and system

developments as shared reference points- makes every conscious effort to exploit the strengths of CoIs- creates a community without “boundaries” and with “no walls around it”- co-evolution of theories, systems, practice, and assessment

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Conclusions

• CoPs and CoIs are two important forms of communities

• the knowledge systems supporting CoPs and CoIs are different

• CoIs pose a number of new challenges- we need to find ways (e.g., boundary objects) to deal with cross-cutting

identities, different value systems, and different notations

- diversity causes difficulties, but it also provides unique opportunities

- the dual goal of creating an object understandable by every participatingstakeholder and at the same time making an important contribution to a specificCoP is not easily achieved

- CoIs support pluralistic societies which can cope with complexity,contradictions, and a willingness to allow for differences in opinions

• in summary the basic message of my presentation:

some initial frameworks, systems, and reflections how“to exploit the symmetry of ignorance in COIs

as a source for social creativity”